Gazette de Leyde

Nouvelles Extraordinaires de Divers Endroits (English: "Extraordinary News from Various Places") or Gazette de Leyde (Gazette of Leiden) was the most important newspaper of record of the international European newspapers of the late 17th to the late 18th century. In the last few decades of the 18th century it was one of the main political newspapers in the Western world.

It was published in French in Leiden, Netherlands. At that time the Netherlands enjoyed a significant freedom of the press. Its circulation likely exceeded 10,000, and it may have reached even up to 100,000.

The Netherlands (United Provinces) were, in the 18th century, very tolerant in matters of freedom of the press and religious freedom. Compared to most contemporary countries, such as France, Great Britain or the Holy Roman Empire, there was little government interference (censorship or monopolies). Many Huguenots fled France for the Netherlands during the reign of Louis XIV, particularly after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685. Several of them began publishing French-language newspapers (French being both their language and internationally used - see lingua franca) in a number of European cities covering political news in France and Europe. Read by the European elite, these papers were known in France as the "foreign gazettes" (fr. gazettes étrangères).

The paper was founded by a Huguenot family, the de la Fonts, and passed into the hands of another Huguenot family, the Luzacs, in 1738. Sources vary on the exact date it was founded, suggesting 1660, 1667 1669 or 1680; they all agree the publication continued to 1798 (or 1811 under a different name).

...
Wikipedia